The globalization of naval provisioning: ancient DNA and stable isotope analyses of stored cod from the wreck of the Mary Rose, AD 1545.

William F Hutchinson,Mark Culling,Bernd Hänfling,Lori Lawson Handley,Sheila Hamilton-Dyer,Tamsin C O'Connell,James H Barrett,David C Orton,Michael P Richards

doi:10.1098/rsos.150199

Abstract

A comparison of ancient DNA (single-nucleotide polymorphisms) and carbon and nitrogen stable isotope evidence suggests that stored cod provisions recovered from the wreck of the Tudor warship Mary Rose, which sank in the Solent, southern England, in 1545, had been caught in northern and transatlantic waters such as the northern North Sea and the fishing grounds of Iceland and Newfoundland. This discovery, underpinned by control data from archaeological samples of cod bones from potential source regions, illuminates the role of naval provisioning in the early development of extensive sea fisheries, with their long-term economic and ecological impacts.

Highlights

Historical ecology has become an essential step in understanding the long-term human exploitation of aquatic ecosystems [1,2].2015 The Authors
Were cod provisions on the Mary Rose caught locally or sourced from some of these distant waters? If the latter, from which population or populations? This paper aims to answer these questions by analysing Single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) genotypes and stable isotope signatures using a set of control samples (n = 168 and 239, respectively) from potential source locations and comparing these with 11 cod bones from the Mary Rose
Repeated genotyping of the samples identified the presence of allelic dropout during polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification in 14% of the control genotypes (66 PCRs), while the target samples showed consistently repeatable results

Summary

Introduction

Historical ecology has become an essential step in understanding the long-term human exploitation of aquatic ecosystems [1,2].2015 The Authors. An open question in this context is whether the requirements of naval provisioning may have played a role in the development of extensive sea fisheries and, concurrently, whether the availability of preserved fish from distant seas helped sustain Europe’s first standing navies. This question is especially pertinent for the sixteenth century, which saw both the naissance of European transatlantic colonialism and the growing importance of sea power as a tool in increasingly global conflicts [10]

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